Fate of Fire-Scarred Enclave in Limbo

With the clock ticking on temporary housing and insurance benefits, tensions are rising among hundreds of fire-displaced residents of a Lake Arrowhead neighborhood, who still don’t know if they can rebuild or whether their property will be condemned by San Bernardino County.

County officials say they want to begin work on at least $50 million in infrastructure improvements in Cedar Glen -- such as road widening and water and sewer system upgrades -- before widespread housing reconstruction begins. The projects may require the county to acquire private property through the power of eminent domain.

At the same time, it is unclear how many of the 336 homes that were destroyed in last October’s wildfires can be rebuilt in their previous locations. Today’s building codes do not allow for the kinds of streamside houses and densely packed cabins that had been erected on the tiny lots.

Shannon Henyan has spent months living alone in a donated trailer amid the charred ruins of her former home, dreaming of the day she will rebuild. Leaving the cozy canyon for another locale is not an option, she said.

“This is my home. My children grew up here,” she said while sitting on a sofa in the trailer, with brightly colored decals of flowers and butterflies on the windows. “I’m rebuilding here, no matter what.”

Henyan’s situation typifies the problems that confront county officials. Her 6,000-square-foot, century-old house with a septic tank close to a stream would probably not have been approved under current codes that require tanks to be at least 100 feet from waterways.

The fire exposed what one county official described as “all the neighborhood’s warts.” Many roads are unpaved and too narrow for firetrucks. Its water district is facing bankruptcy and in need of an overhaul. Some foundations and septic tanks were built in the canyon’s perennial stream.

In late March, the county Board of Supervisors voted to launch a redevelopment project in the badly burned area. Supervisor Dennis Hansberger, who represents Cedar Glen, said the project would help the county borrow money for the work and repay it from property taxes as home values in the area increase.

Although county officials insist they are doing all they can to protect the rights of property owners, they have not ruled out the possibility of condemning as yet unidentified portions of the canyon for safety reasons.

“It is not our goal to use eminent domain in a broad fashion,” said Hansberger. “But if there is a need to protect people and infrastructure by acquisition of property ... it may be appropriate in some circumstances.”

County officials said it may be a year or more before widespread construction is approved in the canyon.

While the county debates options, the canyon’s former residents are desperate for firm information about their chances of moving back into what had been a working-class enclave.

Some canyon dwellers are convinced that the county secretly aims to buy up the lots in the area and then sell them to high-end developers in what could be a robust market for custom vacation homes. County officials deny they are considering such a move.

“The worst-case scenario is this: The county buys everybody out and hands the lots over to developers,” said Kevin Ryan, who survived the Cedar Glen fire and is now a member of several groups organized to boost neighborhood rebuilding. A land grab by the county, he said, “would trigger a class-action suit. We were put in this situation by inattention of state and county agencies.”

Cedar Glen resident Rebecca Houston, whose homeowners insurance living expense payments end in August, was more blunt.

“If we find out the county is lying to us, they’re toast,” she said. “They’re messing with the wrong people.”

Cedar Glen was developed in the 1920s and ‘30s with rustic cabins for vacationing Los Angeles residents. Many of those cabins became permanent homes on 25-by-100-foot lots along narrow mountain roads surrounded by dense stands of pine trees.

Today, it is a bleak and barren landscape of tree stumps and brick chimneys. Concrete foundations jut into the streambed. The canyon’s roads are lined with piles of debris and the rusting hulks of burned-out cars and trucks. Only a few homes were spared by the fire.

Most Cedar Glen residents who had insurance had coverage for living expenses in the event of disaster. That coverage, however, usually lasts one to two years.

“In a typical urban fire, a homeowner would be able to line up contractors and move back in within a year,” said Dawn Fields, claims manager for Farmers Insurance Group. “In this case, they are facing a lot of serious problems beyond their control.”

In the meantime, developers have been quietly approaching local real estate agents about the prospects for snapping up Cedar Glen lots.

“By the time October rolls around” and residents’ insurance for living expenses expires, “I figure there will be a lot of lots up for sale down there,” said Lake Arrowhead real estate agent Carol Logan. “There are people interested in those lots now, but it’s too sensitive an issue and too soon to be making public offerings.”

That kind of talk is raising anxiety levels -- and fueling rumors -- among residents displaced by the fire, said David Stuart of Rebuilding Mountain Hearts and Lives, a group that says it is dedicated to disseminating accurate information about the reconstruction efforts.

“We have over 200 people who want to move back to Cedar Glen,” he said. “But they are running out of time to determine which way to turn. That’s what is scaring everybody.”

Cedar Glen manicurist Marcella Moya, who has been living in a Lake Arrowhead rental with her husband and three children since fire destroyed their home of 18 years, said she had “no idea where we’ll go when our insurance for living expenses runs out in December.”

“We may have to move in with my brother in Fontana and take out a loan,” she said. “That will mean driving up the mountain every day to work and to drop off my kids at school.

“Do we have a plan to move back? Honestly, it’s a one-day-at-a-time plan,” she added. “In the meantime, the stress levels in our family have been raised to heights I never knew we could live with.”

So far, only five Cedar Glen property owners have received permits to rebuild their homes.

Henyan, whose husband died six months before the fire leveled her neighborhood, has been trying to nudge the canyon back to life.

After meals, she buries her leftovers in a small garden of roses and tulips. She said she tucks pinches of lint from the clothes dryer in nearby plum trees “so the birds can build nests with it.”